Hillcrest opens $163M expansion

Hillcrest Hospital will take a big step today with a grand opening to mark the completion of its $163 million expansion project.

More than two years after its groundbreaking, Cleveland Clinic Regional Hospitals executives will be on hand to open the Jane and Lee Seidman Tower.

"We have been watching this go from drawing board to reality. It's generating a lot of excitement," said Hillcrest Hospital President Jeff Leimgruber, adding that the community, doctors, nurses and patients have supported this project.

"We've had many people working on this."

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The expansion project's main components include the 72-private-bed Jane and Lee Seidman Tower, a Level III Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, new surgical suites and an emergency room twice the size of the current one.

The Neonatal Intensive Care Unit will specialize in high-risk pregnancies, especially children born as early as 22 weeks old. Leimgruber said it is the only hospital with such a unit on the east side of Cleveland.

"We have all the resources in place 24/7 to take care of babies at a certain birth term. We can take care of the complicated deliveries," he said.

On average, the Mayfield Heights hospital handles about 4,000 births annually. About 10 percent of those births require special care.

To that end, the hospital also employs backup pediatricians and neonatal specialists 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

"We're also seeing significant transfers from outside of the county to Hillcrest for special needs," said Leimgruber, referring to the Neonatal unit.

That unit should open its doors Nov. 29. Surgical suites will open later that week.

A big portion of the project was the focus on individual private rooms.

"I think that private rooms are really what the industry is moving toward," said Leimgruber, citing a need to further control the spread of infections, noise, and male/female issues as well as providing greater comfort. "People are expecting that and it's really the right thing to do."

One portion of the emergency room department has been open since May. The remainder of the adult emergency room will open Dec. 17.

The expanded ER also will include a pediatric emergency room. Of the 58,000 ER visits, about 17,000 of those include pediatric cases, Leimgruber said.

Despite the complexity and scale of the project, the hospital was able to maintain its services. Patient traffic actually increased in the last few years, said Jim Senick, Hillcrest's administrative director of support services.

Senick also pointed to the wider use of technology throughout the hospital.

"From a technology standpoint, we've added quite bit of enhancements," said Senick, referring to two magnetic resonance imaging machines, electronic medical records as well as Internet access within the emergency room department itself.

"We have a lot more to offer as result of this project due to all this new technology."

Hillcrest is also the only eastside Cleveland hospital with biplane medical imaging, which is part of the hospital's stroke center.

With more than 615,000 man hours, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget, Senick said.

"I think that what this represents is another advancement to great services that have been here for the last 41 years. It represents an ongoing commitment that the (Cleveland) Clinic and Hillcrest have to the community and their changing needs. It really elevates -- in a big way -- the expansion of facilities and the patient's experience -- that's really important to us."